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New Hampshire Primary

This piece was written a few days after the New Hampshire primary, ahead of South Carolina and Nevada.

Here, I document the dramatic rise and fall of Marco Rubio on betting markets. First, the market loved him in response to third place in Iowa and the media hype that followed. However as he famously stumbled under attack from Chris Christie in the next TV debate, confidence drained away immediately, and dramatically.

Given everything that has happened since, this may turn out to be a pivotal, even decisive moment in the GOP Nomination race.

The political betting story of this past week has concerned Marco-mentum and the dramatic transformation of the race to be the Republican Nominee.

While an intriguing Democrat contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders has remained static in betting terms, money has poured in for Marco Rubio on the GOP side. The Florida Senator’s odds have shrunk from 3.5 to 1.75 for the nomination, 8.4 to 3.9 to become Next President. In percentage terms, he is now rated the highest of any Republican in this election to date, at 57 and 26% respectively.

Yet in order to achieve those goals, he will either need to upset the odds in Tuesday’s pivotal New Hampshire Primary, or defy a famous long-standing trend in U.S. politics. For no Republican nominee in the modern era failed to win either Iowa or New Hampshire and, having only finished third in the former last Monday, the current market rates him only 25% likely to win the latter, at odds of 4.0.